Time Management – deadtime tools

We ran a half day workshop session recently on Time Management – and many of the usual issues came up… There’s no magic bullet and it’s about self discipline… any system for time management works better than no system so stop prevaricating and pick one…Pomodoro, JDI, whatever feels right for you is more right for you than random nothingness! 🙂

But one slightly unusual question did make its way to the top of the pile: how do I best use my downtime? The answer is, of course, that you don’t. Downtime is downtime for a reason and if you try and work for too long without downtime you’ll become inefficient and your work will be more and more error-prone.

The reason is simple – downtime is not the same as ‘dead time’ and the real question should be ‘How do I use my dead time?”.

Dead time is time when you’ve got enough energy (or whatever) to be productive but some logistical problem is stopping you. It might be that your laptop battery has died so you can’t access the local cafe’s wifi or it might be that your phone has no signal on the train you’re on or… you get the idea. The issue is simply a logistical one, whatever the cause of the problem.

First things first – check whether you aren’t confusing downtime with deadtime. It might be simply better to stop, rest and take downtime. In fact, if you don’t you might end up with your ‘doing-time’ being so unproductive it becomes deadtime!

Given that deadtime is 99% of the time a logistical issue, the solutions lie in simply being organised enough to keep on top of your logistics. I can’t promise these ideas will make every single moment of deadtime massively productive, but they work for me…

• A kindle – mine has a cover with a built in light so no matter where I am, I’ve always got something useful to read. If you’re traveling with it a lot, I turn of my wifi connection to save on the battery life. The life’s fine but if I’m away for a week, every little helps.
• A laptop – I’m meeting someone for a coffee/meeting in a cafe; I’m ten minutes early – where do you think I’m writing this!? Again, battery life can be an issue, but my Macbook lasts for ages. I make a point of charging it while I’m packing, if I’m going away, so that I know it’s fully charged as I leave the house – a simple trick but one that’s saved my a lots hour or two over the last few weeks as I travel up and down the country by train.
• iTunesU (and podcasts) – subscribe and they’re on your phone. Pack headphones and you’ve got the possibility of a lecture from some of the world’s leading experts in your ear as you’re sitting on a buss! If you’re not familiar with iTunesU, it’s hidden at the back of the iStore but it’s a massively useful resource of some amazing material (and some dross too, of course!). Take a while to check it out and you’ll see what I mean. By the way, comfy headphones are a must if you’re trying to understand tricky stuff! 🙂
• Your phone – personally mine’s an iPhone but whatever you’re using, learn how to use it! You don’t need a notepad an pencil with you any more to jot down those moments of genius you have! There are plenty of apps that will record your voice so you can just talk to it, set the time and have it speak your notes back to you when you’re in the office. No excuses for not capturing your bright idea!
• A good diary set-up – pretty much anyone with a busy job/lifestyle can benefit from a good calendar app on their phone and I’ve taken this one step further by syncing mine with the calendar on my laptop and my office computer; there are plenty of ways to do this, but personally I use Google Calendar for extra backup. What’s more, with a few tweaks of the settings, friends and staff can see when I’m busy, when I’m free and book me in… only those few I trust, of course!
• Training shoes and a skipping rope – okay this is an odd one, I admit, but when I’m traveling this all I need to make my hotel into a gym for half an hour. (I don’t skip in m room – I find somewhere quite outside to do this). Other people run, but I’m too lazy! I’m also experimenting with a yoga DVD to pop into my laptop for that time between waking up and going down for the hotel breakfast…… but I can’t tell you how well that’s working, yet.
• In-car radio thingy – now I have to confess I don’t know exactly what to call this little gadget. It sits in my car and broadcasts to a very short range radio signal (a metre or so) which I’ve tuned one of the stations of my in-car radio to… By attaching my an MP3 player (in my case my trusty iPhone) to this gadget, I can listen to my iPhone in the car. Books, lectures, podcasts and just plain ol’ music. The beauty of this, of course, is that I don’t need headphones, so I stay legal and safe!

So there you go – a quick run through a few of the ways I’m combatting my deadtime. Your mileage will vary of course, and they won’t all be useful to you, but a couple of ‘em might be.

Let me know… … and if you’ve got any useful tips yourself, let me know that, too!